hi everyone, i'm znek, and today i'm going
to talk to you about the ethel cain lore. most people i've seen talk about ethel
only focus on preacher's daughter, but i want to run through every ep that she's
released under ethel cain as well, because why not? you know i have nothing better to do you
have nothing better to do, so let's get into it. ethel cain is a character created by
hayden silas anhedönia. i really hope i'm pronouncing that right (i did not). she was
born in shady grove, alabama, to her mother, vera cain, and her father, joseph cain, who
was a beloved preacher in their community. i say was because her father died in a fire
ten years before the events of preacher’s daughter took place. her father plays a vital
role in her life, so remember him for later. ethel has released three eps:
carpet bed, golden age, and inbred. these eps are not canon to ethel cain’s life;
they’re kinda like aus or alternate universes in a way (they also draw inspiration from
hayden's life) but i still want to talk about them and connect bits and pieces of
them to the larger project of preacher’s daughter. there isn’t as much information on
the eps as there is for preacher’s daughter, so most of my analysis of the eps will
just be my interpretation of them, and i’m open to hearing other’s
people’s understandings as well. before we start, i want to note that we will be
covering very triggering topics in this video, so a general overall trigger warning
in advance for that kind of stuff. i’ll also give a specific trigger warning
to the more intense songs as well. the first track of carpet bed is titled growing
pains. i see this song as a kind of young love or first love type of situation. at first, i
thought it was about maybe a father figure, but as the song goes on, it takes on a more
romantic tone, so i think it’s about ethel as a teenager and potentially an older
person that she has fallen in love with. dog days describes a potentially toxic and
codependent relationship. the guy she describes in this song is a kind of sketchy character, and
you’ll see that a lot with ethel’s taste in men; it’s just terrible every single time without
fail, not to spoil anything but yeah. the song misuse oh is kind of a play on
words. it’s meant to sound like “miss you so,” and in this song, she speaks about being the
problem in the relationship. she feels guilty, like she messed everything up. the title
“misuse oh” makes me think of two things, either she misused her lover as a means
of protection, as the lyrics seem to say, or he misused her, always playing the victim
and gaslighting her into thinking that she’s the problem. we’ll see later on when we
get to preacher’s daughter that ethel isn’t always the most reliable narrator, and
i think this trait carries across projects. the last song on this ep is called antlers, and
i believe this song is canon to the full ethel cain lore. it’s a shorter one about her father on
his deathbed. as i mentioned earlier, her father died ten years before the events of preacher’s
daughter, when ethel was around ten years old. this song is like the last words she’ll say to
her father while he’s alive. she’s telling him off about all of the trauma he’s caused her, and
at the end, she repeats, “it’s all your fault,” in sort of a childish way because you
have to remember she’s just a kid. the atmosphere of carpet bed is overall
pretty laid-back and chill. it really makes you listen to the lyrics of each song instead
of paying too much attention to the production, which kind of stays in the background
and lets ethel’s voice and the ambient reverb shine through. it’s a wonderful
place to start the story of ethel cain. ethel’s second ep is called golden
age. it’s two songs longer than carpet bed (not including the deluxe physical edition)
and the songs are starting to get a little longer (ethel loves making long ass songs as you will
later see.) the first song off of golden age is called sunday morning, which ethel cain later
interpolates in her song american teenager, which, if you’re watching this video essay,
i’m assuming you’ve already heard before, it’s her most streamed song at the moment
(and obama likes it), and I will talk about it a ton when we get to preacher’s
daughter because there is a ton to unpack. as for sunday morning, i'm going to be
completely honest, i have no idea what she’s talking about. there are two or three
ethel cain songs that i just have no clue what on earth she is talking about, and this
is one of them. to the best of my belief, i want to say that this song is about a toxic
man (go figure) i think she’s talking about how she got used to the pain that he caused
her, so much that she feels uncomfortable when she’s not in pain, but that’s just
my analysis from what I can understand. casings is a pretty easy song to understand
compared to sunday morning. it’s that feeling you get when you feel like your partner is being
unfaithful. she asks all these questions about this woman that she believes her lover is going
to see, and the thought of him having someone else hurts her deeply, but since he’s out (presumably
to another woman), he’ll never see her hurt. i also do not understand Lilies very much, but,
again, i will try my best to interpret it for you. it seems like a love song on the surface,
but with sort of a sense of hopelessness, either knowing or believing that this will
end poorly (again, with the unreliable narrator theme). she sings about how
wonderful and angelic this person is, but she says that she’s ultimately going to hurt
him, and that he’s ultimately going to leave, and her belief of this may be attributed
to some previous relationship trauma. trigger warning for self-harm. head in
the wall is a very graphic song compared to everything else we just heard. we see in
the first verse a depiction of self-harm, with her cutting herself and bleeding
onto her bed. i feel like this song, like i mentioned with misuse oh, is
the result of a man manipulating her, and you can hear it with lyrics like “when
i’m just an ugly bitch, a fucking freak.” she speaks about wanting to get out of this
situation, but she can’t because she’s stuck here, and she hates him for it, she hates herself
for it, she hates everyone around her for it, and she hates god for putting
her in this horrible situation. knuckle velvet is, again, about another toxic
man (who would’ve thunk) and, can i say the guitar in this song??? it's literally amazing.
anyways it’s pretty similar in topic and theme to sunday morning, a horrible choice of man who
acts like a child and is abusive and hurts her, and she still can’t leave. this is my absolute
favorite song on this ep*, and it's just amazing, every little thing, and every little
detail is just perfect, i love it so much to be completely honest, this ep really didn’t
stick out to me, but while writing this video, i really enjoyed listening to it? i guess
it’s a grower, especially knuckle velvet, oh my god that song is amazing. um anyway
yeah, this is a really solid ep and if you don’t like it at first, go back and
listen to it after a couple days, weeks, for me it took a couple months, and you may
be surprised. also this is what my friend said this ep looked like and i just thought it was a
perfect description, you’re in a golden cathedral, it’s ethereal, the reverb is echoing off the giant
ceilings, that’s just what this ep feels like. inbred is my favorite of the three eps so i’ll
be spending a lot more time on this one than i did on the other eps. the first track off of
inbred is michelle pfeiffer, featuring lil aaron. i think this sort of fits into the larger
story of preacher’s daughter as ethel singing to her lover willoughby (who we will be coming
back to because he is an important character), and lil aaron acting as willoughby singing back
to ethel. he’s leaving, and she’s saying that she’s not at home until she’s with him, but since
he's no longer there, she's no longer at home. crush is ethel’s poppiest song besides american
teenager. it’s about ethel falling in love with a bad boy (again). he’s always getting
in trouble with the law and in fights, but ethel loves him despite it. this
song is also very fun to play on drums, i feel like that’s valuable
information for all of you. god’s country features wicca phase springs
eternal, and it is our first taste of a truly long ethel cain song. i separate it into three
parts: ethel’s part, wpse's part, and the outro. the first part is ethel’s and it outlines kind
of the feeling of being alone in the world as a young adult. you don’t have your parents to help
you anymore, so you have to make it on your own. it’s usually hard for people born into poverty
to escape it, and often, they end up worse off than their parents, ethel worries that will
happen to her own children, but she maintains a sense of hope about the future regardless.
it’s also hard for people like this to escape the effects of generational trauma, again with
each generation of children having it worse off. the second part is presumably by ethel’s lover.
he’s a bit childish and rowdy, but unlike most of the other guys ethel sings about, he’s a decent
human being. surprising, i know. he talks about being there for ethel (not leaving her like will
did in michelle pfeiffer.) the song's ending is also drenched in hope for the future, which is
quite a contrast from most of ethel’s other music. the last few lines are surprisingly uplifting
and it’s my favorite part of the whole song. overall god’s country is eight minutes of pure
heaven and one of her best works in my opinion. content warning for dark sexual themes.
unpunishable is about sex. okay, well, it’s not that shallow, but i feel like this song
kind of ties into gibson girl in a way, so i’ll leave out some of the context of this song so I
don’t spoil anything from preacher’s daughter. ignoring the lore for a second, this song
is a seductive song, where ethel is taking control of her lover— or so it seems. to
bring back the unreliable narrator theme, i think this sort of god-complex song is the
result of brainwashing or trying to make the best of the terrible situation she's been put
in, pretending she has power over this man, but ultimately knowing that he's the one who is in
control of her. i can’t really explain the rest of what i think this song is about without spoiling
preacher’s daughter, so we'll just leave it at that for the tie being, and we will get back
to this song when we look through gibson girl. before we start this one, I want to give a
major trigger warning for child sexual assault. inbred is my favorite song on the ep, and it’s
also probably the darkest one. the song opens with a scene of ethel as a young child. she’s
showing almost feral behavior, probably a result of parental neglect. in the first verse, she
introduces us to her brother. her brother, like literally every other man in her life, is shady as
hell. he gets in trouble with the cops a lot, but ethel is convinced that he’s a good person because
he takes care of her. (he does the bare minimum) ethel’s mother is in bed, and she believes she's
ill, but with more context, it seems that ethel’s mother has been dead for actually a long time
and that she's rotting. her brother is probably keeping this information away from her. with
her mom presumably being dead in this song, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not canon, as ethel’s
mother is still alive by the end of preacher’s daughter, when ethel is well past childhood at 21.
the chorus introduces another character, a rapist. she talks about how she’s helpless to defend
herself from him, and kind of defending him for what he does almost, saying that it’s
just the way he is. in the second verse, ethel confronts this man, saying that her
brother will protect her– that is, if he gets a break from his own troubles and demons.
that was dark, wasn’t it? um to me, this is the most outright disturbing song in
her entire discography, but it's not the most triggering. this song to me invokes more
of a sense of dread and uncomfortableness, but other songs in preacher’s daughter make
me feel a sense of compassion and fear for young ethel, and i feel like people can
connect to those songs a little more. the last song on the Inbred ep is two-headed
mother, and i don’t even have the slightest idea of what the actual frick she’s talking
about. like, with other songs that i didn’t understand completely, i was still able to pull
together maybe a vague idea of what it’s about, but i literally can’t even come up with anything
for this one. i do really love it though, the guitar is insane but I have–,yeah, i
have no idea what this is about at all. like i said, inbred is my favorite of the
ethel cain eps, and the production is amazing, and i could talk about the songs on this album
for so long, especially god's country and inbred, but we need to get to preacher’s daughter,
and buckle in, ‘cause it’s a wild ride. preacher’s daughter opens with family tree
(intro). we begin with a recording from hayden’s great-grandmother’s funeral from the 90s,
with the preacher talking about what a beautiful gift a mother is. the first verse mentions
her religious upbringing, which she seems to be leaving in the past, especially considering
the next couple of lines. she has the skeletons of her past in her closet that she’s trying
to hide, but it’s not working very well. the second verse outlines the ideas of generational
trauma, which runs throughout ethel’s discography. jesus in the bible was known as the son of god
and mary. ethel in this verse is saying that while jesus can try to downplay and escape his divinity,
he cannot escape his humanity, and it seems like a parallel to ethel’s life, she can’t escape the
humanity of her parents. even if she doesn’t like or approve of her heritage, it is an innate part
of her that she will forever be unable to escape. ethel believes that the fates she references
in the final verse essentially ruined her life by placing her in this family, and set her up
for failure by just being born. as we’ll see later on in this story, ethel very much goes
in the opposite direction from her upbringing, as we can see in publications that I’ll
show you when we get to those events. a contrast to the bass-heavy intro, american
teenager is a more upbeat song that provides a sense of nostalgia before the events of the album
start taking place. ethel begins to describe her childhood, including her upbringing in the church
and small-town american things such as rooting for the high school football team. we then hear
ethel speak of a memory of her neighbor’s brother returning home, but in a coffin. we learn that he
was out at war, but ethel justifies his death by saying he wanted to go, so it was his fault that
he died, while also criticizing the stereotypical patriotic american dream. the chorus has a sort
of double meaning for me. the first meaning is more literal, outlining the impact of war and
violence. army recruits are typically fresh out of high school, so it’s literally a long hard
war with kids at the front. the second is more metaphorical. as i said before, ethel’s music
spends a lot of time discussing generational trauma. the trauma is carried down through
generations, with each generation of children having it worse. in the second verse, we get
a scene from a sunday morning. since ethel’s dad died, she has been taking over service
for the last ten years. however, recently, ethel’s lover, willoughby tucker, left her, so she
has turned to alcohol to cope, which results in her leading church every sunday while inebriated.
we soon learn, however, that ethel has lost faith in the church. even while leading service, she
doesn’t feel the presence of the lord anymore. ethel said in an interview, “they make you think
it’s all achievable and that if nothing else, you should at least die trying. what they don’t
tell you is that you need your neighbor more than your country needs you. i wrote this song as
an expression of my frustration with all the things the ‘american teenager’ is supposed to
be but never had any real chance of becoming.” we learn more about willoughby tucker in a house
in Nnbraska. we’ll see that will is the only man that ethel ever felt truly comfortable with,
although he still wasn’t the greatest person. the first verse is melancholy and nostalgic.
it reminisces on the times that ethel spent with will, good and bad. the “house in
nebraska” is actually just an abandoned house in alabama that the two of them used to
pretend was theirs in nebraska. The abandoned dirty mattress didn’t matter to the two of them,
as long as they had each other, they were fine. they walked to their “house in nebraska” so many
times that it created a dirt road leading there. Eehel’s close with will’s family, so his
mother often calls her to check on her now that he’s gone. still, she can’t tell her
how she really feels horrible, so she just lies to his mom so that she won’t worry about
her. we don’t know just why willoughby left, but ethel feels guilty about it for reasons
that we never learn. even though he’s never coming back, ethel still waits for him and prays
that he would. she drinks to alleviate the pain, as we learn in american teenager, but it just
makes all of her feelings worse. he was the only person that ethel was able to express herself
to, and now that he’s gone, she’s all alone.
